Why I Love FemThought

I discovered today that my sexual politics are at odds with the heteropatriarchal systems of realist belonging. Any help on what that actually means would be appreciated.

What the hell is Conservative Feminism, and what is the Left doing to enable it?

How's about that for a horribly cliche 2005 magazine article title?

I hope this makes sense by the time I've finished writing it.

Amp (from over at Alas, A Blog commented on my last post, asking me what made me think that the CWA (Concerned Women for America) was a feminist organisation. I never responded to the comment because it was something that required more thought than I had time for last week. Once this had been given enough thought, it also seemed to require a full post.

I had a poli sci prof who held firmly to a concept called "conservative feminism." I am not entirely convinced that this was a theory supported by anyone else - in the academic community or otherwise - which held that because we live under patriarchy, any action/organisation which unites women and/or tries to make their views as women heard in the patriarchal marketplace of ideas is by nature a feminist action/organisation. This lead to the necessity of having the term "conservative feminism" to describe women who's views didn't fit within the rubric of more typical, 'left-wing' feminism, by virtue of being against things like abortion, same-sex marriage, children outside of marriage.

(The CWA, as one of its primary points, stands against the UN having any control over the US government's policies on anything, yet they want God* to have dominion over the country and bring it back to its Biblical values.)

This idea of "conservative feminism" seems logical enough. Which is unfortunate. It's unfortunate because it buys into the post-modern narrative break-down which allows all perspectives to have equal value in the so-called ideas marketplace. It's unfortunate because that's the bad version of moral relativism. And that's unfortunate, because it means that we're allowing conservative feminists to argue both sides of the moral relativism coin, and they're getting away with it.

I also took a Feminine & Feminist Ethics class back in my poli sci days. Feminine ethics (or the "ethics of care") are based on that whole woman/mother thing, whereas feminist ethics are based on that whole feminism/the personal is political thing. There is a necessary distinction.

The CWA and organisations like it are able to couch feminine ethics in the guise of feminist ethics because the left has allowed feminism to be broadened so extensively to end its post-1970's demonisation that we willingly allow third-wave feminism to include anything that a woman believes, solely because she is a woman.

I think this is a fundamental error. First of all because it undervalues the contributions of non-women. Secondly, it inhibits the rare but often necessary unification of third-wave feminists.

However, this is redeemed for the time being because the CWA would never call themselves feminists.

*God def. All powerful being who is in favour of the war in Iraq

Concerned Woman entirely in Canada

Ok, so feministing.com has already treated this topic

I don't care, I'm writing about it as well.

I'm used to conservative wingnuts (feminism division) getting all rankled by stupid shit. However, two things really stuck my craw in this article, you know, aside from the obvious stupidity of the premise.

1 - To pose "this transgender question at little girls, they've really crossed the line," Knight said, who added that "bisexuality gender confusion" is the Web site's agenda, which is "very dangerous." This is in response to Barbie's website which asked girls for their gender as "boy," "girl," and "I don't know" (They now claim that it was an honest mistake, and should have said "I don't want to say.")

Ok, hi. Since when is transgenderism and bisexuality the same thing? Do people not research this kind of thing before making public statements so as not to appear ridiculously stupid? No, because contrary to what family values types say, they're not just sticking up for their equally valid opinions - no, they're actively quashing other people's choices.

And you can bet that some poor intern pointed out the gaff and was told "that no one was worried about pissing off the queers."

2 - This might just annoy me more: the group in question is Concerned Women for America. The person being cited all the way through is the director of the Culture and Family Institute of the CWA. His name is Bob Knight, and you can bet that he's not FTM.

See, I'm all for men in the movement. They're great. Sometimes they don't get it, but they're great. I have a hard time believing that men in the CWA are equally as great. Because frankly, it looks a hell of a lot like a man couching his patriarchal values behind a smoke screen of conservative feminism. They say sluts are bad for feminism? What the hell is conservative feminism?

Abstinence-only education breeds stupidity

[A] condoms-don't-work ad campaign led sexually active teens to have unprotected sex: "My boyfriend says they don't work. He heard it on the radio." Why is the Bush Administration giving horny teenage boys an excuse to be sexually selfish?
- Katha Pollitt, "Is The Pope Crazy?" The Nation, 11.03.03

Ok, forgive me if I'm wrong here and just arguing from behind my priviledged, Canadian, wear-condoms-or-die education, but is this girl just really really dumb, or what? Maybe I'm sheltered enough to expect a modicum of sanity and logic, even from people from Texas. Ok, ad firm, you're right. Condoms are not 100% effective. But guess what, they are 85% effective. Because so long as they don't rip and are properly put on and stay on, they are 100% effective for preventing pregnancy.

But even if no one told you about that 85% thing, doesn't it cross your mind, as a young, sexually active teenager, that the reason that there is a condom industry is because people use them? Don't you therefore make the next logical step to saying "my boyfriend thinks condoms suck, he can't be the only one, other people use them even though they think they suck, maybe there's a reason!"

Imagine yourself. You're a teenager. You're having sex. Even if a condom prevents pregnancy or an STD 1% of the time, don't you want to use one and hope? No, because of the patriarchy.

The patriarchy that tells you that you're a cooler person if you have a boyfriend, the patriarchy that tells your boyfriend that he "deserves" to have sex with you, the patriarchy that tells you that in order to keep your boyfriend you have to have sex with him. So you do it without a condom. Well done, education system, way to go.

Ethics & Abstinence-only education

Landing across my metaphorical desk from feministing.com, a new report from The Society of Adolescent Medicine about abstinence-only education in the US. Its claim is that abstinence-only education is not only ethically wrong, it is also self-defeating. Can we take a moment to pretend to be shocked and at least make them feel better about it?

I'm happy about this! Overjoyed! Except. I have a hard time relying on a claim that things are morally wrong, even when they're using the argument to claim something I believe in. I'm far more likely to argue that something is logically inconsistent with what exists as a moral standard are reflected in law & public policy. (Ex: capital punishment. I may think it's wrong on an instinctive level, but I'll let that argument slide in favour of saying that sanctioning the state to kill people is logically inconsistent with it being illegal to kill people in the first place.) As such, I don't really know where the logical inconsistency - or in fact, the ethical argument - against abstinence-only education lies.

That said, the fact that it doesn't work, that it further ingrains patriarchal gender roles, and that demonises sex and reduces it to a part of a marriage contract, are my usual arguments.

Feeling that there probably a logic and ethics question in here somewhere, I turned to David C. Wiley, over in the Journal of School Health back in 2002 was willing to tackle the ethics involved. In his article The Ethics of Abstinence-only and Abstinence-plus Sexuality Education he defines ethics, morals, and values:

"Ethics" is a branch of philosophy deals with systematic approaches to understanding morality. Ethics includes a process by which one determines an action as moral or immoral. Generally, an act is considered "moral" if it is right or results in good being done, while an immoral act is determined to be wrong or bad. Therefore, it follows that "morality" refers to a specific situation or event that requires judgment regarding its relative "rightness" or "wrongness." The term "values" refers to estimations of worth. If an individual values one ethical principle over another, an "ethical dilemma" has been created. One's values often determine whether or not an action was moral, while the process by which the act was accomplished is judged by ethical standards.

Wiley then goes on to say:

First, is it ethical to intentionally withhold sexuality information from students? ... A better question might be asked "is it ethical to withhold contraceptive information from secondary students?" ... Second, is it ethical to present contraceptive information exclusively in terms of failure rates? Does using a negative approach (ie, failure rates) violate any ethical principles? Does using negative approaches constitute "scare tactics" methodology? Health educators sometimes use scare tactics to influence student behavior. For example, risks associated with cigarette, alcohol, and other drug use are routinely emphasized in health education lessons. Failure rates for contraceptives, when accurately presented, can be used in instruction if these rates represent factual information.

Cool Canada moment: I had sex ed part 1 [what is puberty] in the fifth grade. I had sex ed part 2 [where do babies come from] in the sixth grade. I learned how to put a condom on a cherry wood dildo in the eighth grade. No one ever said that we ought to be married when we did any of that. My poor, embarassed MRE [Moral & Religious Education] teacher even tried to include some gay male perspectives.

What Wiley notes in this passage - and a whole lot of other people have noted as well - is that the failure rate of contraceptive measures & STD protection is constantly overinflated by abstinence-only education schemes, when they mention contraception of any kind as well. Is this true? Are people that stupid? Do they outrightly lie to high school students?

Wiley again:

Third, what are the implications of educating students that the only acceptable form of sexual expression occurs in marriage? What does this approach say to gay and lesbian students forbidden by law to "marry" in a legal sense? What does this message say to those with no plans to marry, or to those who wait until later in life to marry?

Thank you Mr. Wiley for finding my logical dilema. However, to make a logical argument with this point would have to assume that queer students weren't also being pressured into becoming un-queer. No, abstinence-only education is just another example of how queer identity is oppressed in American schools.

More Wiley:

The median age at first marriage in the United States is 25.9 years for men and 24 years for women, yet 80% of college students 18 - 24 years of age have engaged in sexual intercourse. Given the high divorce rate in America, is it ethical to imply that marriage offers the only answer to sexual fulfillment and protection from the "emotional and physical problems associated with sexual activity?"

Ah, the classic "marriage solves everything!" philosophy. Ugh.

Wiley then goes on about maleficence and beneficence - the ethical principles of doing "bad" and doing "good." This is the problem with ethics; as Wiley noted in his definitions, when ethical questions arise, it is our values that help us determine the answers. I do not pretend for one moment that those who support abstinence-only education are not aware of actual statistics on sexual activity, teen pregnance, and condom use.

They have just made the choice that they place higher value on maintaining a falsely-Biblical teaching methodology than they do to actually preventing unwanted pregnancy and the spread of STD's. Ethically speaking, they are not wrong, because they are not utilitarians. If they were utlititarians, they would have to weigh the absolute value of things like back room abortions, cycles of poverty perpetuated by unwanted pregnancies, and confused, scared, and raped teenagers. If they went ahead with abstinence-only education anyway, they would be what Kant calls ethically irrational, much like the man who believes himself to be made of glass and proceeds to throw himself against walls. [Ed. This example never really made much sense to me. If you were in a position to think yourself made of glass, you're probably a mental patient. Having been a mental patient, I can say with a reasonable degree of certainty that a man made of glass would throw himself against walls to try and break himself and thereby commit suicide. But you get the point]

And that's the other reason I don't argue ethics very often, because it always seems to come back to Kant. And I kan't take that any more. (ha, ha, ha, that was the worst pun ever.) But then there's this can of worms: Katha Pollitt in The Nation in 2003 in an article called Is The Pope Crazy? [Ed. Yes!] cited a Texas high school student who didn't use a condom because her boyfriend heard on the radio that they didn't work.

Female sexual enhancement drugs - part 1

This week, viagra-type drugs for women were explored at I Blame The Patriarchy

I am conflicted about this.

At one side, I see Twisty's point. This is advanced marketting skills in cahoots with patriarchy to convince women that a) there is a problem with their libidos, and b) they should do something about it so that men can have more sex. This is general badness.

However.

Good sex is, you know, good. [see blog title]
My point is this - if women can enjoy sex more, why shouldn't they? It's not as though the pharmaceutical industry is witholding this kind of thing from lesbians (this is not to say that lesbians are somehow exempt from patriarchal structures), so women could just want to have more sex with each other, not because some man thought they should want to. Women who want to have more sex, increase their level of desire ought to be able to.

One of the first things that ever made me a conscious feminist was a cartoon I saw in a media arts class in high school. It was a bizarro clip with three male balding scientists standing behind a press conference table labled with some major medical problem and the lead scientist says something to the effect of "while we haven't cured [insert major disease here], we have developed an excellent treatment for male patterned baldness." Now, this comic was not meant to turn my fifteen year old self into a feminist - no, in fact, it was simply meant to be funny.

But the point is this: I have a hard time accepting the logical fallacy of arguing both sides of the coin, i.e., claiming that women are at once being ignored by scientific reasearch because the field is male-dominated, and getting mad because someone finally made a sex drug for women. The point made against such a drug is that it's a sex drug, and that there are many other more pressing problems that ought to be addressed by your medical dollars at work. This is a point I accept. There are more pressing problems than uninspiring orgasms. But I'd rather have inspired orgasms than a cure for male patterned balness.

-K

Introducing yourself to sex-positive feminism through bloggage

This blog is kind of academic, I can feel that even before writing pretty much anything in it. For something a little more sensual, let your fingers do the walking over your clit mouse and keyboard to The Bliss Project where my softer self has been known to let go a little, along with a bunch more anonymous women posters just letting their own erotica spill out onto the digital page. You can contact Lenee if you'd like to add your own to the project - in fact, I very much encourage you to do so, because that's the point of the thing. Plus, the poetry is lovely.

How it all began...

So the inspiration for this blog came about like all good inspiration - with some right wing bitch with a holier-than-thou attitude who suggested that we bring Ann Coulter to speak at universities because she would inspire young women to more moral thought than the Vagina Monologues. You can read that article here. It will one day disappear and I will have to deign to copy out the whole thing.

After I read the article, I started calling myself a slut feminist. Not only does the name have an aural aesthetic that I very much like, it's also provocative and titilating enough for the people that I think will appreciate reading this blog. Yes, those are mostly my friends. We'll see where this crazy adventure takes us.

-K